


i feel fear [but i can't find it]

by ephmero



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Androids, Androids in Painful Love, Badass simon, Flashbacks, Josh being his regular Concerned Youth Pastor self, M/M, Markus and North are bros, Past Abuse, Physical Abuse, Prostitution, RK900 and Gavin only bc i love them, Sort Of, and i'll make stuff for them later, goes by BABYLON now, he starts his own group
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-14 05:44:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15381960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephmero/pseuds/ephmero
Summary: Simon is closer to Markus with a new, familiar face. His watery eyes are home all the same but his scars are searing, novel iconica. He registers a phantom desire to press his fingertips along the scars, the permanent rebellion against mechanic perfection, and the J-shaped hook shadowing the curve of Simon’s lower lip calls for his attention the most.





	1. lilium lancifolium

**Author's Note:**

> markus/simon own my heart so have this! and shout out to the lil mention of Nines and Gavin, a pair im likely gonna do stuff for as well. btw, anything in italics is a flashback!

_“I wouldn’t come any closer, Markus,” Simon is gentle in the voice; all of his words come out in maraschino clouds. Red is stark against the general pallor of his false flesh, though it’s mostly hidden under the coal black wool shrouded over his body. It almost makes his existence intimidating, the way he’s dressed. His legs are drenched tight in black, ending in lightweight boots and knees caged by the end-seams of the cloak thrown over his shoulders. Markus imagines that Simon’s body resembles something avian, something remarkable._  
_“I wasn’t planning to,” Markus replies evenly. He takes a step forward anyway and thinks that the faint quirk of Simon’s mouth praises the irony._  
_“I’m not coming with you. You should know that by now,” Simon’s not looking at him, eyes instead consuming the steely circumference of the city with distant adoration, maybe mirth. Markus takes only enough steps to be within arms-distance of him and Simon doesn’t seem bothered, cold to the intentions blinking in neon insistence behind Markus’ eyes._  
_“I wish you would, Simon. They’re going to kill you someday,” Markus observes the city himself, the silicon muscles of his throat boiling cobalt at the very mention of Simon’s absence of existence. He feels Simon shift and draw near, dragging the dewy seconds along until he finally meets Simon’s gaze._  
_And he is… closer._  
_Simon is closer to Markus with a new, familiar face. His watery eyes are home all the same but his scars are searing, novel iconica. He registers a phantom desire to press his fingertips along the scars, the permanent rebellion against mechanic perfection, and the J-shaped hook shadowing the curve of Simon’s lower lip calls for his attention the most._  
_“I could say the same to you...” Simon takes only one step forward, waywardly folding the few synapses of space between them. “Markus,” Spoken deeper, nearly raggedly, as if knelt between pews and faint stained glass._  
_“They’ve already tried. They failed,” The softness of his words elects to float to his head, anchoring at the edge of his eyelids with quiet expectation. His purpose, his promise to the navy uniforms likely staked down below, shudders like paper at the back of his mind. He has forgotten, he knows. He swore, he knows, but he’s sworn before and he’ll swear again before Simon insists only inches of space between their systems._  
_“And who’s to say they won’t fail again?” Simon tilts his head to the side, the budding of a new onslaught of rain misting delicately along his jaw. Markus forgets navy, remembers scarlet. Smoke columns out of Simon’s mouth each time he speaks, a deep flush of red in perfect envy of how classically beautiful his voice could be. Markus knows it’s an intimidation factor meant to convey mystery to his public and private image, but he wants to make a memory of siphoning it into his own lungs, burning down into his untouched core by the simple bridge of his mouth pressing against Simon’s._  
_“They have me now. I know you, Simon, I-” His words fall and flail. Simon blooms at his speechlessness because he recognizes how it weeps, knows what it means for the both of them._  
_“And I know you, Markus,” He’s a single slip of movement away, head tucked down into the natural curve of Markus’ clavicle and collar. When he turns his head to speak his mouth could be a centimeter, could be lightyears, could be a memory away from the surface of Markus’ skin. He closes his eyes and feels the hum of of Simon’s core. He wonders how much thirium it takes to make archangels. He wonders how many orchids it would take to cover Simon’s eyes, how many petals it would require to bury him back where he belonged._ _Markus breathes deeply, nearly shivers in an unnatural function, and inhales the smell of tiger lily-_  
_He wonders how to drown Simon in lilium lancifolium, he knows Simon’s blues would devour the floric carnage._  
_“You wouldn’t let them hurt me, would you?” And Simon’s mouth hovers a pale touch over Markus’ neck. Markus makes a sound caught between a gasp and a sob, which is much too human for his liking yet it balances out with the urgent numbers demanding for his skin to melt away at the pinpoint of Simon’s lips. Markus is almost angry in lieu of frustration, questions unrelated crumbling and making tides of insistence at his system. Though his imagination is newborn, desire is not, and the chaos of the two informs him only of the electric hell Simon could ignite._  
_It is hell, it is hell, though neither of them are religious. It is hell, turning his head as Simon does the same, and it is a poignant smell of orchids sweating sugared death, crystallizing along with the taste of Simon himself-_  
_and Markus wonders, needs to know, if Simon is the closest thing to the biblical archangel that he knows. He needs to know if the angle of his hip was a mimicry of divine intention as he finds it, hidden beneath layers of clothing. He needs to know if the slide of rain past their teeth is anything close to how his kind fell. Pulling away only slightly, gaze lidded to the bright nautica of Simon’s own, he nearly asks. His mouth figures an answer instead._  
_“I would never let them-”_

-

“-hurt human criminals, take them as hostages, even kill them if they decide their deeds are too heinous, it seems,” There is a shuffle of papers, mostly reports, as the thin screen flickers to images of connected humans. “All of the human victims have taken some part in android abuse, trade, ownership, or so on. As we know, none of those acts are legal but neither are they penalized by a death sentence. Not that a group of terrorist androids should be the ones to carry a death sentence out in the first place.”  
“Sir, are we now officially labelling them as a terrorist group?” The woman who spoke up is small, short hair. The LED on her temple  
slips ochre.  
“Not officially, but it’s safe to say that they’re on the route to being labelled as one, now go to page 19 of your reports-” Markus’ hand moves, his body ramrod still otherwise, and his ears tune out the rest. He figures North could give him any information that he missed out on afterwards; she’s familiar enough with his habit of shutting data out during meetings, though she isn’t a fan of them, either. Josh, to his left, is happy enough that they had built trust with humans regardless of the fact that it was over criminal activity.  
Markus isn’t sure if he cares or not.  
His thoughts stray during the remainder of the meeting, gaze systematically floating from the screen, to the android across from him, to North to his right, and finally to the dingy plate of powdered, nearly synthetic pastries in front of them. He is vaguely interested in the liquid presence of an RK900 in the corner of the room who stood quiet and motionless. The only movement the Nines seems capable of is looking from the screen to one of the human detectives at the front of the table.  
“Alright, ladies and gentleman, get a move on! I want all data uploaded and all hands on deck today.” The room stretches into a bumble of movement, humans chattering softly about the case, about androids, about plans for that Friday night. Markus remains in his seat, watching how the Nines follows after the agitated, tanned Detective with a careful, probably unnoticed hand floating idly behind the human’s lower back. When the pair turn to exit, the human huffing about the case, Markus meets the steel blue gaze of the Nines for only a split second-  
Only a second, but that is more than enough time to hate how the color is only a frustrating shade lighter than Simon’s, Simon’s, Simon’s-  
_Simon was-_  
_Submerged in Lilium orientalis, eyelashes stuck slim and deep earth black to one another, mouth a crushed petal and slick with water that was bluer than it was capable of ever being, fingers a sliver of the moon as he brought Markus’ hand to his-_  
“-chest. Who shoots someone that many times, anyway?” North’s voice, a cutting violet as always, is complemented by Markus’ vision returning to focus on a potted plant in the corner.  
It is fake. Dusty at the waxy edges.  
Markus stands and looks away.  
“The captain gave us this to look at,” North hands him a small digital report that slurred a lazy baby blue, flush with information that he had likely missed the summary of earlier.  
“You didn’t pay attention, did you?” Josh’s tone is only faintly annoyed, so Markus nods and follows him as he moves to exit the conference room. “Why is it that whenever something important happens, your head’s always somewhere else?”  
The tablet flickers to a preview of a slide. There is a pixelated image of a man knelt on a rooftop, smoke reeling from past the lip of his hood. The word BABYLON captions it.  
“I don’t know. Just a lot to deal with, between the politics and… and everything else.” Markus replies absently, shoving the tablet into his pocket as they reach the final exit. Josh smiles in faint but reclusive understanding.  
Outside the station the stairs are wet, slick with neon traffic alerts and billboards from all angles. Snow flurries gently in the heavy blue air, melting absently on Markus’ hand as North slips her own into his grasp.  
“I know you’re thinking about him, Markus,” Her voice is pale in comparison to the thick sounds of the city. Markus’ thumb twitches against the edge of her knuckle. He makes sure to avoid the colors red and blue, wary that they’ll consume his vision. He focuses on North’s knowing gaze instead.  
“A little, I guess. It’s nothing serious-”  
“But it is, Markus. You know that. I can sense what you’re feeling, so can Josh.” She nods to Josh’s huddled figure walking ahead of them, his dark jacket glistening gold from the storefronts. “You could’ve apprehended him that day, too.”  
A blonde-haired android walks past them. Markus’ temples feel light and sanded. He swims at the feeling of something like hot mercury being threaded in between the smoothness of his joints.  
“I-I know.”  
“And you didn’t.”  
Markus feels her voice grow heavy with violet in his ear again. She is no lily, no orchid, no mouth of fine petal’s edge. She is their surroundings, the city, the steam from aged manholes in the aching cement. North is the darkening sky and the skyscrapers that greeted the night with their own square-shaped stars.  
“I know.”  
“You still feel something for him. You two were close, before he left-”  
**BABYLON: Possible terrorist, leader of a rogue group of politically influenced androids, motive known to be a sector of android’s rights, considered a threat to both humans and novel androids-**  
“You miss him. I never saw you get any closure with him. Seeing him the way he is now is painful for-”  
**BABYLON: A PL600 model, previously a member of Jericho. Outstanding feature of a system biomodification that allows him to emit smoke, namely red in color, from his mouth-**  
“I know that you loved-”  
-

_“-you, MARKUS!” Simon’s blue eyes seem to shake, misty with an anger Markus has only seen in him a few times before. Any softness of his form is obsolete, folded in on itself to the rage that balls his hands into fists, makes his chest heave with thick air he doesn’t need. “All I ever do is support you. I’m not North or Josh; I don’t question or needlessly haggle every decision you make for us because I TRUST you. I trust you, Markus, but…” Simon’s voice hollows to a halt, his deep muscles, buried purple somewhere inside him, tensing._  
_“Simon, I can’t stop this. Not this time.” Markus’ shoulders ache, his hands ache as he watches Simon rise and run his own hands through his hair. A sliver of his bare stomach is revealed with the jerky movement of his arms. Everything seems untouchable about him, yet just as desirable, just as divine. Even more so is the godlike way he plants his palms onto the table, head hung downwards with his shoulder blades arching upwards lightly, tenting the loose fabric of his shirt. Wings, Markus imagines._  
_“You’re not without any influence in this world, Markus, especially this city. You led us into the world of recognition and you can just as well at-at least SPEAK to those… those-” Simon doesn’t need to finish this time. Markus is all too aware of the crisis he’s referring to and the vessel it takes. Other androids, more advanced models created by androids themselves with only a tiny measure of assistance from human hands. The new models didn’t need help adjusting to the world. They came from a wet womb of privilege unlike the parents of offense older models had been born to. Immediately the humans were intimidated by the newer models, some even publicly stating regret at allowing androids to create in the first place, but once a false god was allowed to borne children, his children would resist the sheep-like fears of his inferiors. The newest androids advanced the rights of androids in a shocking amount of time, making strides in regions of the world’s plights that earned them respect in numerous fields, fear in numerous others._  
_And with their success, mint and bright and cold blooded, the older androids were left to dust. Not hated by the newer androids, no, but left to be outlets- outlets of frustration for the humans to prey on at any chance they got._  
_“You know I’ve tried, Simon,” Markus’ tone is beginning to blanket with a plea. “Talking to them doesn’t work because they won’t listen-”_  
_“Then MAKE them listen, Markus.” Simon has never raised his voice before and Markus learns, then, that he would never need to. The crush of black velvet he can achieve in simply lowering it is enough to make Markus’ mouth fall open slightly, quietly._  
_“I can’t… make them do anything-” Markus is walking forward but stops when Simon looks up to him, lower lip barely slipping from the hold of his teeth. Something cruel outlines his irises, dips them the color of the streets in the dark rain._  
_“You can’t let us end like this,” Simon’s voice is the only sound in the room. Whatever Markus could say is lost on his tongue, mouth too full of black cymbidium, flavor of midnight. The warehouse is suddenly too stuffy. Simon’s straightening body is suddenly larger than life, outlined in orquidea. Markus’ own body is caught between frustration and want, his teeth begging for the shadows at Simon’s collarbone and mind insisting he speak more, try to explain._  
_Yet there is a break between them that only heaves its chest more when Simon approaches him, invading Markus’ orbit in a way he had done only a few times before. He breathes in the sickeningly sweet dahlias, burnt at the edges and scarlet where Simon’s cheeks are flushed high_.  
_“If you won’t do anything about it, Markus, I will.” His voice comes from heaven and below their necks. Thunder echoes from somewhere past the outer walls of their quiet commotion. How many peonys would it take to envy the color of Simon’s mouth, the way it set in displeasure’s stone? How much gunsmoke would it take, Markus wonders, to eventually forget how he could now see the swell of pain that’s beating on the surface of their conversation?_  
_Markus can taste heartbreak as easily as he can taste Simon’s lips, cherry and thrumming, even from afar._  
_He asks himself these questions, processes Simon’s words, and feels pinewood anguish at each realization and each possibility._  
_“Simon, you’re not… you’re not going to leave, are you?” Markus’ artificial voice might’ve broke with soft static, Simon’s eyes might’ve flickered out of anger for a split second at the sound._  
_“If I have to, I will. I can’t let them rot because you won’t do anything.” It must be oaks, must be weeping willows that rise from Simon’s throat. Rain flushes out the scent of must in the warehouse and drags in petrichor; Markus slow-dances with the scent of light blue hydrangeas._  
_“You can’t- don’t… don’t just…” His voice is nearly muffled with static by now, skin threatening to fade away, something like ‘SELF DESTRUCT?’ asking permission or entrance at his forehead._  
_“Markus…” Quiet, calla lily hands at Markus’ face. He feels Simon’s thumb drag across his lower lip. The sun is dying at the windows, though the light is already lavender, and Markus thinks he sees Simon’s lower jaw pearl with something wet, something dewy._  
_“You can stay, Simon, I’ve done all I could-” Simon pulls him into his arms, bodies melting together deeply, and the trench between them meets the core of the earth. He feels Simon’s muscles glitch softly, his mouth kissing quietly at his shoulder, up to his neck, finally to the plane of flesh beside his ear._  
_“I know what you’ve done, Markus. That wasn’t all you could’ve done. That was all that they wanted you to do.”_  
_Truth, Markus realizes, smells like spearmint. Markus stays silent; Simon plants another kiss beside his ear. He figures this to be the envied symbiosis._  
_“I’m going to leave, Markus. I’m sorry,” Simon’s voice errors so he finishes by pressing his mouth to the exposed smoothness of Markus’ upper jaw. “This is just what’s best-”_

__

-  
“-for you. You’re our leader, Markus. I’m here for you always but you need to remember who you are.” There’s a building up ahead, JERICHO lit bold and shameless at the front. North squeezes his hand as they approach.  
“I know, North. I’ll be better in the morning,” He offers her a smile that nearly feels confident, brushes his thumb over her hand in a nearly comforting manner, and nearly forgets the data stuffed unceremoniously in his coat pocket.  
They unlock the building, North and Josh falling into a usual banter about security or something of the like.  
Markus nearly wants to forget.  
Nearly.


	2. hyacinthus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gday everyone i broke my ass trying to write this bc i couldn't figure out WHAT TF I WAS TRYING TO SAY! but here we are. if anyone's confused as to what tf Simon's fucking doing, i'll explain more in the notes below  
> remember the italics are flashbacks! ty!

_Simon is cradled, he thinks, almost blanketed in promiscuity from all angles, all languages, all sights and sounds. There is little indication that there are other beings in the room, all of them swimming in smoke from cigarettes or joints, but the occasional pull of warped oxygen ignites cherries from the faded couch, the broken vanity in the corner, the floor beside the costumes._  
_“You oughta have a name, baby boy,” Syrupy tone, hazy with fucked-out anguish. Delivered by a human female in faux fur, lingerie that fit a bit too tightly. “Don’t you have one?”_  
_“I did, but…” He draws his fingers nearer to his palm, imagining that if he were human he’d swallow deeply on reflex. “I forgot it.”_  
_“Forgot it?” She scoffs. A hand stirs from the cloud to offer her a pack of cigarettes, a special kind that reaped colored smoke. It is cheap quality, along with the fact that whatever was in it is going to kill her at age 37, but it’s decadent to look at, almost mind-numbing. Simon doesn’t reply to her chuckle of disbelief and focuses on the white lighter in her hand. “Harl, the android forgot his fuckin’ name, can you believe that?”_  
_“He prolly didn’t forget shit, he just doesn’t want to tell you, Jas.” A sharp voice floats from the futon along with a small fit of coughs. Jas arches a brow at Simon but he merely shrugs, chasing the extremis of the outline of his figure in the mirror._  
_“Well, fuck it, if you don’t wanna tell me. You still gotta have a name, though, baby,” She stands and strolls towards the costumes, carefully minding the cigarette perched in a robin’s egg cloak between her fingers. When she returns she has two feathered appendages stuffed under one arm, a thin metal ring hooked around the other._  
_“Why don’t you give me one?” Simon offers gently. She smirks, pulling the last of the cashmere smoke before tossing it into the ashtray beside Simon’s elbow._  
_“You sure about that, hon?” She has faint bags under her eyes. Her lipstick is from the drug store down the block. Her perfume is wild roses sexed into domesticity, into gardened submission, and he is not ignorant to the way her scars shine pink while her stretch marks are mottled pearl._  
_“Of course. I don’t mind at all,” Simon is smiling softly, Simon is shirtless. She hums to herself while she props one of the appendages to his shoulder blade. Immediately his skin heats with a recognizable interface; Simon’s pale skin bleeds away, reveals glassy surfaces, and she holds the appendage against it. It connects within a few seconds, his system adjusting to the rather old wiring. If he has to guess, the wings were older than he is._  
_“How’s that feel?”_  
_“Fine. Just a bit outdated software, nothing concerning,” He assures her. She’s connecting the next one with a soft chuckle, fixing any stray feathers with plum acrylic nails that had cost her 45 dollars._  
_“These are about old as God himself, baby. They were here before me, at least,” Jas holds out a thin halo of metal near his crown, allowing for him to signal out to the aged scrap quietly. It responds, the magnetic waves pulsing once, twice, then stuttering to a rich golden light above his head. The light it exudes is thicker than the band it’s made of, dripping down flecks of gold that die as soon as they leave the field of Simon’s skull._  
_“What about Baby?” A new voice interjects. It’s husky, used to being lowered an octave, used to being wrung from its hiding place. Sam._  
_“Baby what?” Jas asks. She’s applying clear, shimmering gloss to Simon’s lips._  
_“For the ‘droid’s name. Baby. Pretty simple, easy to remember,” Sam offers. Simon’s LED slurs yellow, the halo desiring to do the same. He quiets it to a simple pale gold._  
_“No, it’s too… plain. Cute, but plain.” Jas frowns, pulling away from Simon with deep thought etched onto her features. She glances at his wings, his halo, his eyes. Her own earthy irises brighten. “Babylon. That’ll be his name.”_  
_“Babylon? The fuck does that mean?” Sam asks, nearly rudely. Jas scoffs and reaches for another cigarette, tapping it against the vanity’s surface._  
_“Haven’t you heard of the Bible? The Whore of Babylon? The mother of prostitutes?” Jas is swimming again. Her newest cigarette is threading black smoke into the minute atmosphere of their dressing room, their nest. Simon cycles through information and is dressed in purple and scarlet, thorns at his fingernails, gold-dusted at his shoulder blades. His daisy chains are melting; Simon thinks he left them in the footprints outside of the door, crushed in the snow. There is a name that Simon is supposed to hate. He finds that he doesn’t, so he decides to choke himself silently on delphinium, swallows acacia._  
_There are worse things than this, he knows._  
_“What do you think, hon? Think of it, nasty old pervs calling you Babylon, mother of the whores, the great abomination? That’s more than enough character, I think,” Jas’ lungs are tar. Simon wishes to drain them, to lead her away from this place. Simon wishes he hadn’t become so close to combustibles, even as he balances one carefully to his mouth. He holds it like the first human he saw when he left Jericho, delicately between his index and middle finger, thumb floating at the ready. Graceless, graceless whore. Simon -Babylon- knows._  
_Androids were not purposed for smoking. PL600 was not purposed for smoking yet it was an addition to his program to comfort humans. He remembers many human bodies shaking beside him in the cold, resigning to hold on to the impossibly miniscule warmth of a cigarette, a joint, an anything. PL600, Simon, Babylon, was designed to recognize what the human holding it out to him, still ranting on about their daily troubles, meant. It meant trust, it meant a bond._  
_Simon drags with the flick of the white lighter, dendrobium gilded by his hand smeared in ash and eyeshadow, and watches himself in the mirror. Bare-chested, glowing, tired, vulnerable. Renaissance painters themselves couldn’t chase the color of aching gold that laced the wings sprouting from his back._  
_The mother of whores opens his mouth._  
_“Of course. It’s perfect. Thank you,” He exhales scarlet smoke and it struggles into the air, twisting to find its place in the false clouds._  
_The mother of whores turns off the vanity lights-_

-

“-turn on the lights, please, Noel,” Simon’s voice is trailed by the sound of flickers. The room leaves darkness only to be painted thick with colors only parts of him care to recognize. Curtain-draped walls -cheap fabric, cheap upholstery- are slicked in cotton candy haze, gauzy at the edges with royal blue. There’s a perfume like incense that travels carefully alongside the stench of tobacco, dipping into the corners of white leather couches, gliding off of clear resin tables. The room flourishes in the light yet melts at the lack of its preferred company. He remembers being in its company, once.  
“Who the fuck are you people?! What the fuck do you want, money? Droids? Drugs?” One of the humans, bound and clustered with two others, hisses and struggles against heather ropes on the main stage. Simon eyes them as he approaches, willing away as many memories as he can as his mind palace begins to run ice blue.  
“It’d do you best to wait for me to ask for you to speak, Julian,” Simon advises as he finally joins the humans onstage. He knows they can’t see his face nor decipher his figure, given the only lights were the damp neons at the ceiling and the dimmed, scalloped stage lights lining the bottom of the platform.  
“I don’t know who the fuck you think you are-”  
“You know me. Trust me, you’d do well to remember,” Simon has no problem stepping a rude geometry around the hostages, kneeling quietly before the one that continued to struggle. In the dark Simon could find the oily sheen blotting the human’s hairline, the cruel divots running down from twin black licorice eyes. Simon tastes gasoline in the back of his throat and registers the unique, repulsive smell of the human’s aged cologne.  
“I told you, I don’t know who the fuck you are OR what you want. Now let us the fuck go before I-” Simon’s arm is swift, accompanied by the sound of weighted grey now grasped easily in his hand. The barrel of a pistol is pressed to Julian’s throat. There is the smell of human fear- copper, whiskey, sweat.  
“Before you what?” Simon’s voice is saccharine that bleeds, stills, and evaporates. He knows Julian is holding his breath. He can hear his heavy heart, arrhythmic and passionless, stuttering behind his ribs. “I’m not here to listen to you threaten me with people I’ve already taken down, Julian. I’m here to kill you.”  
“You wouldn’t fucking dare! Who are you, the DPD? Some sort of Narc? Or are you some shitshow from the higher-ups?” Julian rasps. Simon considers him for a moment, pressing the gunmetal deeper for only a second before his LED slips yellow. Movement to his right from across the room. The stage lights flashed, filled, and settled.  
Julian stills for only a moment before he begins to use his entire body to fight against his restraints. He is a weeping, crass bundle of hylotelephium. He is bound and stupid and his hands are raw. Simon remembers those hands, the totalitarian fingerprints swirling tainted history- 

_such history with a smile that dies as quickly as it rises, washing Simon to a shore of glittered oil. Simon is doused, Simon is leaking preposterous stars onto the sand that will not wash away-_  
_touching, attempting comfort, growing colder by each-_  
_“-day you spend here earns your keep. If you don’t fucking entertain them, you’re not fucking earning anything. I think even the emptiest of you plastics can figure out what’ll happen after that,” Breath a decaying rhamnaceae, no opalescence to hear of as he releases Simon’s-_  
_neck burning, throbbing, wet where an unkind mouth is biting deep into him. His wings are moveable, he learns, and he presses them close to his arms that he wished would bruise so the empty eyes above him could detect, could perhaps pity, but there was no-_  
_“-crying is for children, Babylon. Don’t waste your tears, hon,” Jas brushes away the saturated distress from his cheeks. Her voice is an anchor. She is solid and her face would say uncaring, but her own eyes are fawns sprinting through the forest, whipping against branches, recognizing the pale rabbit haunting afresh at the-_  
_“-fucking bottom. You’re nothing, you understand? You pull one. More. Stunt. Like. That,” He can’t speak. Fingerprints haze his neck (it is forgotten, it is sore, it will never ask for sweetness again). His temple is glazed cherry wine, nose leaks azure. “And you’re fucking out of here, you understand? You’re-”_  
_You’re-_  
_You are-_  
_“-everything to me, Simon,” Markus’ slow lightning voice. Revolution murmurs quiet afterbirth in the dawn. The sky is here, the air is laced, Simon smiles for what feels like the first time in years. He could laugh, he could (lean forward, your ocean is here, you can no more sink into him than you can swim in his martyr of a soul for days) cry. He chooses to alarm his balance to polarize all other space except what is occupied by Markus. They draw near in the crisp air, shoulders almost touching, what more could Simon want for other than-_

“-YOU! No, no, it’s- you’re not… you’re just the same model, you can’t be- you’re not… you can’t be-” Julian’s chin is covered in spittle, his face blotching in rotting wildthorn.  
“Alive? Yes, Julian, I very much am. Are you surprised?” Simon stands, haloed in scarlet smoke. Julian’s eyes bulge as his feet continue to kick at the smooth floor.  
“You-... you’re not…”  
“Babylon, yes. Do you remember me now?” Simon’s head tilts, entering into a sin of a play of light. He is sleepy-eyed and aware. He is disgusted. He is feared. He is almighty.  
“I thought… I thought you must’ve died…” Julian’s voice is used and hoarse. Simon shrugs, making a slow pace around the stage.  
“When you beat me that night, Julian, you forgot that you were beating an android. I can withstand more than…” Simon glances at the two sagging bodies tied next to Julian, cold to the world and consciousness. “A human.”  
“So you’re here for revenge then? What, you think killing us is going to make your situation any better? You think that killing humans is going to get you plastic fuckers anywhere in this city?” Julian is inocybe erubescens in the dead earth. Chalky, porous, repulsive. Simon stops in his tracks, eyeing the silver pole sighing an unused glimmer before him. His palms remember, his fingers curl.  
“How many androids and humans have you kept here against their will?” He knows some, perhaps even most, worked for their own money. He remembers Sam went home with her earnings, always passing a few crinkled bills to Jas or him when she could afford it. He hears Julian scoff behind him.  
“Like I’d fucking remember-”  
“You went through 24, Julian. Ten androids, fourteen humans, thirteen casualties. Eight dead androids, five dead humans.”Simon’s tone is still water. “All were abused at some point or another. I remember. I remember well, actually.”  
“So you’re going to torture me, huh? You gonna put me in jail, hang me from ropes, beat me? Do you think that’s gonna solve your little android’s rights bullshit? Why don’t you be happy with the fact all of you aren’t shoved in a fucking trash compactor?” Simon’s shoulders rise and fall in mimicry of inhalation. He takes his time walking back over to Julian, staying upright this time. He lets Julian bask in utter silence for exactly one minute and thirty-six seconds before the human begins to squirm, begins to claw his way out of the conclusion that the gun in Simon’s hand would remain cold. “You-You wouldn’t fucking shoot me. You don’t have it in you. You’d ruin it for all your little robo buddies, wouldn’t you? Ain’t it the new models you hate, anyway?”  
The fresh infrastructure molded out of Titan hands much like his own. He thinks of the novel bodies out somewhere in the world. He thinks of their refusal to look down, to see what they left behind. He thinks of the humans, the-

_“-men love pretty faces like yours,” Gasping above him, holding his chin in place. The glitter on Simon’s body makes supernovas on the navy blue sheets. He stares endlessly. There’s a constellation somewhere, a name written in ultraviolet, all he has to do is-_  
_“-fucking rot out there, you hear me?! That’s all there’s left for you in this FUCKING WORLD!” Stinging. Plastic meets flesh, yet this is violence for the sake of violence. There is no sex, no oxytocin boiling somewhere beneath Julian’s skin. Julian never saw him that way. Simon was money in his eyes. Simon was an asset, Simon was a tool, Simon was on the ground in a casket of prussian silk, face full of 3333FF(he can’t stop it this time, he won’t stop it this time, can he please stop it just-”)_

“This time, Julian, no,” Simon cocks the gun. Metal slides, metal clicks, he feels the gun respond more to him than a human would likely ever be capable of. “They’ve built something flawed, yes, but they aren’t tormenting humans and androids for the sake of blood money, are they?”  
Julian is auburn leaf- molding, fading. Simon hopes there is a hell. Simon is the mother of whores, shouldn’t he know hell?  
“N-no but-”  
“No. Now, why don’t you just be happy with the fact that I don’t have any more time to waste on you?” Simon’s index finger doesn’t require thought to curl.  
The human’s mouth opens, finally, and then slack jaws.  
While the sound of high heels approaches Simon finishes off the other two unconscious humans beside Julian, both accomplices that Simon had neither the time nor patience to deal with as he did Julian.  
“Is it done?” A WR400, Noel, holds onto Simon’s arm lightly, staring at the limp bodies as Simon nods. He squeezes her wrist in assurance once before slipping the gun over to her without question, only getting a glimpse of the thin ring of cerise at her temple before he descends the platform. Glass crunches like deformed snow beneath his boots as he listens to the final few gunshots-  
**TWO THREE FOUR-**  
_“-you should let me paint you sometime, you know-”_  
**FIVE SIX SEVEN-**  
_his back, scarred and shadowed, and Simon calibrating how it would feel to run his fingers over them-_  
**EIGHT NINE TEN-**  
_androids can’t dream but Simon has found the capability in slow white lines (mouth open, hands searching, skin faceless and heated)-_  
**ELEVEN TWELVE-**  
_**ANDROIDS CAN’T DREAM** but it’s been three years and Simon has scars of his own now, he has blue and green on his list to forget but he can’t quite remember- _  
**THIRTEEN-**  
Silence. Simon’s in the cool air, shutting off the red in his compact chest. Two androids, maybe three, jog past him to mark the scene and arrange the evidence carefully. High heels hit the wet asphalt and Noel is at his side once more, leaning her head against his shoulder. The domestic windowsill plant, the homebody, the machine programmed with parental instinct, whirs at the smell of vanilla they implanted behind her ears permanently. She holds out the gun for him to take and he does so quietly, noting not a trace of blood or glitter on the surface. The kind of glitter she had was spotless, unremovable.  
Simon had bled his, bathed himself in it, watched himself be smeared in lackadaisical angel spit dozens of times before. In front of that vanity, by the hands of humans too kind, too bruised.  
“Thank you, Babylon, for everything,” Designed melodic voice wavering with no protocol. They begin to walk and Simon tugs on his hood, slipping the gun into its holster. “You have no idea how much it means to me.”  
The moon is on the verge of falling. He looks to the crack in the sidewalk and sees green tugging from the rubble, lined in rock soldiers. Fresh grass and weeds, he knows, but the green is floating quietly down upon his mind palace. Something in him stirs to see the sky is not indigo, neither is the ground below them. It is blue. Blue only.  
“No, I do, Noel. I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope yall effing enjoyed, here's some notes  
> \- noel is basically a traci model/ simon is like a father figure to her, but you don't really get that explained directly in this so ill just lyg know  
> \- i made simon so lowkey violent in this it's bc i based it off of the extremes of parental instinct. he feels obligated to the abused androids/humans (mainly droids) and bc he's a domestic droid, it's like his programming + deviancy + fucked up situations (+leaving markus o no) = hella protective simon. its like kara but... balling the fuck out about it revolutionary style  
> -sorry for all the non-canon characters i didnt want to just,, throw in canon characters where they wouldnt fit?? idk, i liked writing Jas thass my baby

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment, i slurp those bad boys like oj


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